Category: trees

Trees, grass, drought and the future

Can lush lawns be sustained with future droughts and water supply issues looming? Photo: Mary Newsom
Water and our supply of it is on my mind this week, as a smoky haze drifts around Charlotte, reminding us of the wildfires in the tinder-dry N.C. foothills and mountains west of the city. It’s been abnormally hot and dry  for months in the Appalachians and the Southeastern U.S. Two Western North Carolina counties are now in exceptional drought and seven others in “extreme drought.” 
In the Charlotte region we’re currently in Drought Stage 1 (moderate drought, voluntary watering restrictions). Boat ramps at lakes Norman and Wylie just outside the city have been closed. Some of our shrubs are succumbing. And my guess is we’ll move into Stage 2 (severe drought) shortly after the start of December.
The city’s water-sewer utility, Charlotte Water, has a keen interest in encouraging people to conserve water, and not just in a drought, although they tend to concentrate the mind, so to speak.
Taking the long view, Charlotte Water officials see that relentlessly sucking more water from the local reservoirs – Mountain Island Lake and Lake Norman – is not a strategy that can sustain the area’s growing millions of residents in future decades. Further, towns and cities downstream of Charlotte use the same river (dammed decades ago into a series of lakes by what’s now Duke Energy ) for their water supplies, so draining it is not an acceptable option.
So Charlotte Water officials are eyeing the area’s beloved lawns as a way to reduce water use. On an average day, the utility pumps 100 million gallons of treated water each day, says Jennifer Frost, public affairs manager at Charlotte Water. But during the summer that’s been from 130 to 135 million gallons a day – due to people irrigating lawns. “I think we hit 143 one day in August,” she said recently.
But Frost notes that suggesting people reduce the size of their lawns in favor of more drought-tolerant plantings hasn’t, in the past, been a winning message. So she hopes the utility can, instead, join with local efforts to encourage more tree planting and better care for existing trees.
“Inherent to growing a canopy is that reduction in turf grass,” Frost says. And, she says, “We will not get to the next level of water conservation without reducing the level of irrigation that we use.”
For the record, here are the requested water restrictions for Charlotte, for now:
  • Irrigate only on Tuesdays and Saturdays between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m.
  • Limit landscape watering to 1 inch of water per week, including rain.
  • Conserve water indoors and outdoors.
  • Refrain from outdoor water use during the day (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) to reduce evaporation losses.
  • Don’t fill swimming pools, and top off full pools only on Thursdays and Sundays, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
  • Turn off water fountains and other decorative water features.
  • Use commercial car washes that recycle water, not your home hose.

‘Do not try to design neighborhoods through a computer screen’


The photo at right arrived about 10 days ago from Davidson-based transportation planner John Cock.
Cock and I were among a group of fans of the late Warren Burgess, who died at age 56 in May 2005.
The plaque was installed a few weeks ago beside a bald cypress tree that had been planted in his honor in Davidson’s Roosevelt Wilson Park shortly after Burgess died.
Burgess – or Warren, as I’m more comfortable saying – was for more than 20 years an urban designer on the staff of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission. He was Davidson town planner from 2000 to 2003. To this day, he has a fan club of sorts, people like Cock and former Davidson planner Meredith Judy whom Warren mentored, as well as other urban designers and planners in the area, like David Walters, the just-retired head of UNC Charlotte’s Master of Urban Design program.
You may have noticed over the years that there are some occupations that lend themselves to memorial plaques,
statues, road-namings and the like. City planner is not typically one of them. But Warren was cut from a different bolt of cloth, and gave so much of his heart to Charlotte and Davidson that it’s only appropriate that it be noted somewhere.
After seeing the plaque photo, I looked back at two columns I wrote about Warren when I worked at the Charlotte Observer.  The first was in 2000, when he left Charlotte city hall for Davidson. I noticed something unusual at the sheetcake-and-punch ceremony for him at the government center. As I wrote then:
“Among the people saying nice things were Dottie Coplon, a relentless neighborhood activist who has battled both planners and developers, and Bailey Patrick Jr., lawyer and lobbyist for some of Charlotte’s most successful developers. It’s not often those two are singing from the same song sheet. But getting people together is one of the things Burgess does best.
“… The Thursday event symbolized something important about him. …  When you think about it, Warren is really just a bureaucrat, but he’s a bureaucrat with a difference: He wears his heart on his sleeve. … Sometimes, when people talk about “fighting City Hall,” it’s planners and zoning laws that they’re fighting. Burgess , who works at City Hall, understands that, but he still tries to help.” 
 He always walked over and over through neighborhoods where he was doing a plan, to get to know its terrain, its history and its residents. He sketched relentlessly, making drawings at meetings to supplement his notes. He cared – as the plaque notes – about trees, but also about creeks, front porches, sidewalks, plazas and parks, all the things that make up a city. He had these words of advice to other planners:
“A city is made up of people,” he told the farewell party. “Do not try to design neighborhoods through a computer screen.” 
When Warren died in 2005, I wrote: 
“Burgess left his fingerprints all over this city, in the plans he drew, the enduring vision he had for his city and the people and places he touched.
“Cities need catalysts, and Warren was a catalyst. He was always putting one person in touch with just the right other person, and dropping a good idea in just the right place, and in doing so altering the course of the planet.”
He spoke for the trees. But just as important, he spoke for the people who plant the trees, for the people who make up a city.

Guerrilla tree planters, here’s a project for you

(See note at end about where to find this blog after Friday.)

Today was a sunny morning, unseasonably cool for mid-June, and so I took my last 4-mile walk to my job at the Observer (Friday is my last day after 17 years on the editorial board). Only had one vehicle nearly hit me – a white SUV at Morehead and Kenilworth. At least I made him squeal his brakes.

I’ve chronicled some of my pedestrian adventures in my weekly op-ed columns, such as (“The foot challenge for Sun Belt cities” and “City walkability goal hits an icy patch” and “Walk this way. If you can.”

This morning, I thought – not for the first time – about the possibility of a little guerrilla,  tree-planting campaign. I tend to think of this as I walk up South Tryon from Morehead Street to the Observer building at Stonewall Street.  The N.C.-owned right-of-way alongside the I-277 bridge, where those odd witch-hat/Klan-hood sculptures sit, is bare grass. It’s a bleak trek across that bridge, let me tell you, and once you get past it, you sure could use some shade. What you get, though, is grass. And some “art.”  (To be fair, the sculptures do offer a bit of shade at the right time of day.) But what about it? Someone want to sneak onto some of our fair city’s spots-that-need-shade-trees and just plant some trees? Come December, if you see someone out there with a shovel and some oak or maple saplings, it might just be me.    
 
After June 17, if you want to read The Naked City blog, don’t look for this URL (marynewsom.blogspot.com) because it will be disabled when I leave the Observer.  Instead, seek out nakedcityblog.blogspot.com. Right now it’s in the process of being designed (using the word “design” quite loosely). That’s where you’ll find me after my last day at The Charlotte Observer.